Cablevision Offers 1-Year Deal To Fox To End
Stand-Off

With only hours to go before the World Series begins airing on Fox, a rep for Cablevision released the following statement to Consumerist:

In the interest of Cablevision’s 3 million households and our mutual viewers, today we have made a new offer to News Corp. Simply put: we agree to pay the rate Fox charges Time Warner Cable for carriage of WNYW-Fox 5 New York and WTXF-Fox 29 Philadelphia for a period of one year. This is higher than the rate we pay any other New York broadcast station. This solution is in the best interest of not only baseball fans but of all Cablevision customers and Fox viewers. We look forward to a positive response.

Now we just sit and wait to see if Rupert Murdoch’s team accepts the offer.

What this means for Cablevision subscribers’ rates remains to be seen. We’ve requested a comment on this topic from the cable company and will update when we hear anything back.

Yeah, and they probably think they are doing their customers a favor too.
“In the interest of our customers” – that is just too funny to believe. I am still wondering if they are planning any sort of credit to their customers. Look at Netflix. They have a problem for what, less than a day, and they are offering credits to people. And customers didn’t even have to ask for it (well, from what I understand, you had to click on a link in the email that was sent to you).

I blame the subscribers who insist on paying the outrageous fees. No different than AT&T charging an arm and a leg to have the privilege of owning an Iphone.

Seriously, only until subscribers start dropping off like flies, will this end. The FCC would have to insist on separating the infrastructure (cable/fiber) from the content and forcing the providers to bill the consumer directly. Then this will end. Not until then.

The solution is simple. Get rid of the overpriced sports telecasts from regular network TV. Move it all to a subscription channel and make those who want to watch it, pay their own way.

This way programs will in future run on schedule, without sports overruns, costs will drop and make Fox and the others pay Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner and the satellite providers to carry their advertising financed channels.

Cablevision isn’t big enough to make that kind of impact. They would need to have Verizon, Comcast, TWC, and Brighthouse to make a stand with them. Now that they realize they can get away with charging whatever they want, they will continue to do so.

Bad move. If CV’s business model is so fragile that they have to cave in to extortion to save it – if only temporarily – then they’re doomed anyway. Fox is the one that that needs viewers for the World Series where only San Fran and Texas and a handful of others will be watching anyway. And it’s all downhill after that. Everything else you can BT or use TOR and watch on Hulu (since they’re illegally blocking CV IP addys).